Cambodia Prime Minister blasts Thailand at Asean summit

Cambodia accused Thailand of invading its territory Saturday on the opening day of a summit of Southeast Asian leaders that was supposed to focus on plans to create a regional economic zone. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen took aim at his Thai counterpart over a bloody border dispute, in the closed-door opening session of the two-day summit in Jakarta, according to a transcript of his comments released to reporters.
"Thailand as a big country continues to have the ambition of prolonging the armed conflict in order to violate weaker neighbouring Asean members," Hun Sen told the assembled leaders, according to a transcript provided to reporters. "The invasion of the Thai troops of Cambodia's territory resulted in a series of clashes and eventually a large-scale war from the 4th to the 7th of February, 2011."
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters after the encounter: "We had a frank discussion this morning." -- Indonesia turns focus to food, energy security "We need to resolve the problem because we don't want this to be a problem that would affect Asean's agenda on community building," he added.
The border spat was not on the formal agenda of the two-day summit but is overshadowing discussions on Asean's long-term efforts to create a closely integrated regional economic zone by 2015. Other issues on the table include food and energy security, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, the scourge of human trafficking and East Timor's membership bid.
But even before the presidents and prime ministers of the disparate 10-nation bloc sat down in Jakarta's cavernous convention centre, their discussions had been framed by negative news from troubled member states. Myanmar stole the headlines on Friday when Asean officials announced that the military-led country - which is under Western sanctions for serial human rights abuses - had asked to chair the group in 2014.
US-based Human Rights Watch said Asean, already struggling for credibility, would become the "laughing stock of intergovernmental forums" if it granted the request. Asean leaders are meanwhile facing mounting pressure to help end the Thai-Cambodian conflict, which has claimed 18 lives and temporarily displaced 85,000 people in weeks of clashes.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke of rising food and energy prices, climate change and unrest in the Middle East during his opening remarks. "We must give serious attention and take concrete measures to address the soaring of food prices and world energy, which in turn will negatively affect the prosperity of our people," he said in his opening speech.
"History shows that the rise of food and energy prices... has always caused the increase in the number of people living in poverty, yet we know very well that decreasing the poverty level is not an easy task." But without mentioning the Thai-Cambodian row, he also reminded his fellow leaders that Asean could no longer use the bloc's long-held principle of non-interference to shirk the need to resolve conflicts between member states.
Asean's halting efforts to negotiate an end to the clashes are being closely watched as a litmus test of its soaring ambition to create an integrated regional community in just four years' time. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa met his counterparts from Thailand and Cambodia in Jakarta on Friday and said they had agreed to accept Indonesian military observers at the disputed frontier. But he said the modest observer mission, which would have no power to police a cease-fire, had yet to be dispatched because of stubborn differences over troop locations.